by Anne Perry
Cadell let out his breath very slowly. “I see.” His eyes did not waver from Pitt’s face; they were so intent it was unnatural. “May I ask if Guy Stanley was one of them?”
“You may, and yes, he was,” Pitt said levelly. He saw Cadell’s eyes widen and heard the very slight sound as he drew in his breath.
“I see ….”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Pitt corrected. “He was not asked for anything, except a relatively worthless silver-plated flask, as a token of submission more than anything else. It was of no value of itself, only symbolic of victory.”
“Then why … why was he exposed?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “I would guess it is as a warning to the other victims, a demonstration of power … and of the will to use it.”
Cadell was sitting very still, only his chest rising and falling as he breathed unnaturally slowly. His fingers did not clench on the desk, but they were stiff. He was holding himself in control with a massive effort.
Footsteps passed along the corridor and disappeared.
“You are quite right,” he said at length. “I have no idea how you knew I was a victim as well … perhaps I should not ask. The suggestion made about me is … disgusting, and totally untrue. But there are those who, for their own reasons, would be only too willing to believe it and repeat it. It would ruin not only me but others as well. Even to deny it would suggest the idea to those to whom such a thought would never have occurred. I am helpless.”
“But you have been asked for nothing so far?” Pitt insisted.
“Nothing whatsoever, not even a token of submission, as you put it.”
“Thank you for being so frank, Mr. Cadell. Would you describe the letter for me? Better still, if you have it, may I see it?”
Cadell shook his head.
“I don’t have it. It was cut from newspaper, I believe the Times, and glued on plain paper. It was posted in the City.”
“Exactly like the others.” Pitt nodded. “Will you keep me apprised of anything further you may receive, or anything you consider could throw any light on this at all …”
“Of course.” Cadell stood up and ushered Pitt to the door.
Pitt left uncertain of whether Cadell would tell him or not. Cadell was obviously a man of great self-control, deeply shaken by events. Unlike others, he had not told Pitt what the threat to him had been. It must cut too sharply, cause too deep a fear.
But then Dunraithe White had told only Vespasia. He would not have told Pitt.
He caught a hansom in Whitehall and went straight to see Cornwallis.
He found him at his desk amid a sea of papers, apparently searching for something. He looked up as soon as Pitt came in. He seemed glad to abandon his task. His face showed the marks of tiredness and strain. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin papery, shadowed on his cheeks and around his lips.
Pitt felt a tug of pity for him, and anger welled up, driven by his own helplessness. He knew that what he had to tell Cornwallis now would make it worse.
“Morning, Pitt. Have you news?” Cornwallis asked before the door was closed. He looked closely at Pitt’s face, and understanding of failure came slowly into his eyes. Something in his body relaxed, but it was not ease so much as despair, a knowledge of being beaten again.
Pitt sat down without being asked. “I’ve spoken with Leo Cadell at the Foreign Office. Mrs. Tannifer was right. He is another victim, just the same.”
Cornwallis looked at him sharply. “The Foreign Office?”
“Yes. But he hasn’t been asked for anything, not even a token.”
Cornwallis leaned forward over the desk and rubbed his hands over his brow up onto his smooth head.
“That’s a police commissioner, a judge, a junior minister in the Home Office, a diplomat in the Foreign Office, a City banker and a retired general. What have we in common, Pitt?” He stared at him, a flicker of desperation in his eyes. “I’ve racked my brains! What could anybody want of us? I went to see Stanley, poor devil ….”
“So did I,” Pitt said, sinking back in the chair and crossing his legs. “He couldn’t add anything.”
“He didn’t defy the blackmailer.” Cornwallis leaned forward. “The poor devil didn’t have the chance! I think we have to assume that his exposure was a demonstration of power, to frighten the rest of us.” He waited to see if Pitt would disagree. When he did not Cornwallis went on, his voice lower, catching a little. “I had another letter this morning. Essentially the same as the others. A little shorter. Just told me I’d be blackballed from all my clubs … that’s only three, but I value my memberships.”
He was looking down at the disordered papers on the desk as if he could not bear the intrusion of meeting anyone’s eyes. “I … I enjoy going there and being able to feel comfortable … at least I did. Now, God knows, I loathe it. I wouldn’t go at all if I were not involved in certain duties I would not betray.” His lips tightened. “The sort of place where you would wander in if you felt like it, or not visit for a year, and it would be just the same as when you were last there. Big, comfortable chairs. Always a fire in bad weather, warm, crackling. I like the sound of a fire. Sort of a live thing, like the sea around you. Like a ship’s crew, stewards know you. Don’t have to be told each time what you like. Can sit there for hours and read the papers if you feel like it, or find some decent sort of chap to talk to if you fancy a spot of company. I …” He looked away. “I care what they think of me.”
Pitt did not know what to say. Cornwallis was a lonely man, without the love or the warmth, the belonging or the responsibilities, of a wife and children such as Pitt had. Only servants waited for him in his rooms. He could come and go as he pleased. He was not needed or missed. His freedom had a high price. Now there was no one to talk to him, demand his attention or offer him comfort, take his mind from his own fears and loneliness, distract him from nightmares or give him companionship and the kind of love that does not depend upon circumstance.
Cornwallis started pushing around the papers on his desk as if he were looking for something, making what had been merely untidy into complete chaos.
“White has resigned,” he said, gazing at the shambles in front of him.
Pitt was startled. He had had no idea.
“From the judiciary? When?”
Cornwallis jerked his head up. “No! From the Jessop Club. Although …” His voice was strained. “I suppose he might resign from the bench as well. It would at least remove him from the power or the temptation to comply with this man’s wishes … if that is what they are.” He pushed his hand over his head again, as if he had hair to thrust back. “Although judging by his treatment of Stanley, he could be perfectly capable of then exposing White even more violently to warn the rest of us, and surely White will have thought of that?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly.
Cornwallis sighed. “No, neither do I. When I saw him at the club, just before he resigned, he looked appalling, like a man who has read his own death warrant. I sat in my chair like a fool, pretending to read some damned newspaper … you know I can’t look at the Times these days?” His fingers were fiddling with the letters, notes and lists in front of him, but idly, not as if he had the faintest interest in what they were.
“I looked at White and I knew what he was feeling. I could practically read his thoughts, they were so like my own. He was ill with anxiety, trying to suppress the fear in case anyone else guessed, attempting to appear natural, and all the time half looking over his shoulder, wondering who else knew, who thought he was behaving oddly, who suspected. That’s one of the worst things of all, Pitt.” He looked up, his face tense, the skin shining across his cheekbones. “The mind racing away with thoughts you hate and can’t stop. People speak to you, and you misinterpret every remark, wondering if they mean something more by it. You don’t dare meet a friend’s eyes in case you see knowledge there, loathing, or worse, that he should see the suspicion in yours.”
Suddenly he stood up and strode over to the window, his back half turned to Pitt. “I hate what I have allowed this to make me into, and even as it happens I don’t know how to stop it. Yesterday I met an old friend from the navy, quite by chance. I was crossing Piccadilly, and there he was. He looked delighted and dodged in front of a brougham, nearly being clipped by the wheels, in order to see me. My first thought was to wonder if he could be the blackmailer. Then I was so ashamed I couldn’t look in his face ….”
Pitt scrambled for anything to say that would be of comfort. Everything would be lies. He could not say the man would have understood or would have forgiven. Does one forgive for being considered a blackmailer, even for an instant? If Cornwallis had suspected Pitt, Pitt could never have liked him the same way afterwards. Something irreparable would have been broken. He should know Pitt better than that. Blackmail was an abysmal sin, cruel, treacherous, and above all the act of a coward.
Cornwallis laughed abruptly. “Thank you at least for not replying with some platitude that it doesn’t matter, or that he would never know or do no better himself.” He was still staring at the street below, his back to the room. “It does matter, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to forgive. I couldn’t forgive any man who thought me capable of such a thing. And worst of all, whether anyone else knows, I know it of myself. I’m not what I thought I was … I haven’t the judgment or the courage. That’s what I hate the most.” He turned to face Pitt, his back against the light. “He’s shown me part of myself I would rather not have known, and I don’t like it.”
“It has to be someone who knows you,” Pitt answered quietly. “Or how would he have learned of that event sufficiently to twist it as he has?”
Cornwallis stood with his feet slightly apart, braced as if against the pitch of a quarterdeck.
“I’ve thought of that. Believe me, Pitt, in the small hours I’ve walked the bedroom floor or lain on my back staring at the ceiling and thought of every man I’ve ever known from schooldays to the present. I racked my brains to think of anyone to whom I might have been unjust, intentionally or not, anyone whose death or injury I could even have been perceived to have caused or contributed to.” He spread his hands jerkily. “I can’t even think of anything I have in common with the others. I barely know Balantyne to speak to. We are both members of the Jessop Club, and of a Services Club in the Strand, but I know a hundred other people at least as well. I don’t suppose I’ve spoken to him directly above a dozen times.”
“But you know Dunraithe White?” Pitt was searching his mind also.
“Yes, but not well.” Cornwallis looked mystified. “We’ve dined a few times. He’s traveled a little, and we fell into conversation about something or other. I can’t even remember what now. I liked him. He was agreeable. Fond of his garden. I think we spoke of roses. His wife is clever with space and color. He was obviously devoted to her. I liked it in him.” Cornwallis’s face softened for a moment as he recalled the incident. “I dined with him again another time. He was held in town late, some legal matter. He would have preferred to go home, but he couldn’t.”
“His decisions have been erratic lately,” Pitt said, remembering what Vespasia had told him.
“Are you sure?” Cornwallis was quick to question. “Have you looked into it? Who says so?”
With anyone else Pitt would have hesitated to answer, thinking discretion better, but with Cornwallis he had no secrets in this.
“Theloneus Quade.”
“Quade!” Cornwallis was startled. “Surely he is not another victim? God in heaven, what are we coming to? Quade is as honorable a man as any I know of-”
“No, he’s not a victim!” Pitt said hastily. “It was he who noticed White’s opinions lately and became concerned. Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould approached White because of it.”
“Oh … I see.” Cornwallis bit his lip. He frowned, walking back towards the desk and staring moodily at the tossed piles of paper. He turned to Pitt. “Do you think his erratic judgments are born of his anxiety over the blackmail, for fear of what will happen next, what he will be asked for? Or could it be the price he is paying to the blackmailer, and somewhere among the eccentric decisions is the one that matters, the one this is all about?”
Pitt considered it seriously. The thought had occurred to him before, briefly. He had given less weight to it only because he was so overwhelmingly concerned about Cornwallis.
“It could be the latter,” he replied. “Are you sure that is not the connection between you … a case in which you both have some part?”
“But if it is, then where are the others involved?” Cornwallis asked. “Is it political? Stanley is already ruined. His part hardly matters now … or does it? Was it always part of this plan to destroy his power, to prevent him from obtaining the position he sought?” He jerked his hands wide. “And Cadell? Is there a foreign power involved? Tannifer’s bank certainly deals with many European banks. Enormous amounts of money could be concerned. Balantyne fought in Africa. Could that be it?” His voice rose a tone, suddenly an edge of eagerness in it. “Could it be to do with the financing of diamonds or gold in South Africa? Or simply land, perhaps expeditions inland to claim whole new tracts, like Mashonaland or Matabeleland? Or some discovery we know nothing of.”
“Balantyne served most of his time in India,” Pitt said thoughtfully, turning it over in his mind. “His only African experience that I know of was Abyssinia, and that’s the other end of the continent.”
Cornwallis pulled his chair around and sat on it, staring at Pitt, leaning forward. “A Cape-to-Cairo railroad. Think of the money involved. It would be the biggest thing of the coming century. The African continent is an entire new world.”
Pitt caught a glimpse of the vision, but it stayed on the edge of his mind, just beyond clarity. But certainly it was a fortune, a power for which many men would kill, let alone blackmail.
Cornwallis was staring at him, his face dark with the enormity of what he perceived. His voice was urgent when he spoke.
“Pitt, we have to solve this … not just for me or for any of the individual men it may ruin. This could be far more widely reaching than a few lives made or lost; it could be a corruption which could alter the course of history for … God knows how many.” He leaned farther forward, his eyes intense. “Once any of us yields to the threat and does something that really is wrong, perhaps criminal, perhaps even treasonous, then his hold is complete and he could ask anything and we would have no escape … except death.”
“Yes, I know,” Pitt agreed, seeing an abyss of corruption open up in front of him, every man suffering alone, driven by fear, exhaustion, suspicion on every hand, until he could bear the pressure no longer. Simple murder would have been less cruel.
But rage was a waste of energy, possibly exactly what the blackmailer wanted; useless, time-consuming, clouding the mind.
Pitt composed himself with an effort. “I’ll look into all Dunraithe White’s cases over the last year or so, and all those scheduled to come before him as far in the future as is known.”
“Tell me!” Cornwallis demanded sharply. “You had better report every day, so we can compare what we know. At the moment we are in the dark. We don’t even know in which direction to begin. It could be fraud or embezzlement, or a simple murder that appears domestic. There must be money, or it wouldn’t involve Tannifer, and some foreign interest for Cadell, and possibly Balantyne …” His voice sharpened, and he raised his hand, banging his forefinger on the desk. “Mercenaries? A private army? Perhaps Balantyne knows the man who would recruit for it., or lead it? He might have knowledge he does not even realize … and some criminal case that White and I are both concerned with. Or that I may become concerned with. Perhaps we are beginning to understand something, Pitt?” There was hope in his eyes. “I could have asked White myself, but he’s resigned from the Jessop, and I don’t have the opportunity to speak to him casually anymore. And Balantyne only comes for the committee meet
ings. I think he hates it as much as I do. The man looks as if he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks.”
Pitt forbore from saying that Cornwallis looked the same.
“Cadell less so,” Cornwallis added, rising to his feet again. “But then I suppose it is a week or so since I saw him … before poor Stanley was ruined.”
“You know Cadell?” Pitt said quickly. He had not been aware of that, although it should not surprise him. Society was small. Hundreds of men belonged to a mere handful of clubs and associations.
Cornwallis shrugged. “Slightly. He was on the committee at the club. It’s a group who meet every so often, to do with a charity for orphans. It’s the only reason I go now. Can’t let them down.”
Pitt rose also. “I’ll start to look into Dunraithe White’s cases. I think that is where we’ll find the link. It must be something in the recent past or on the calendar for the future. I think the future is more likely.”
“Good. Let me know the moment you find anything, however tentative,” Cornwallis urged. “I might be able to see the connection before you do.”
Pitt agreed again, and left to begin, collecting a list of all the current investigations over which Cornwallis had a general authority. Then, armed with a brief note of introduction and explanation, he took a hansom to the Old Bailey Courthouse.
The afternoon had gained him a list of cases, but it was bare information and there were several pending with which both Cornwallis and White had some connection, even if tenuous. What he needed was an informed opinion, preferably that of someone who was aware of the situation. Theloneus Quade was the obvious choice. Pitt had no idea where he lived, and to approach him in court where he was presiding would be difficult, and possibly unwise.